Diving into the DATA

Working with Tableau has helped me to understand many of the ways that rows and rows of data can be turned into useful information.

For example, I did a little bit of keyword research, using Google’s AdWord tool to try to find the best keywords for a potential client to optimize on.

The initial result is a data-download from Google that looks something like this:

Data Download from Google AdWords Keyword Tool

In Excel you can sort, arrange and even highlight certain rows based on criteria you set. However, by quickly pulling this data into Tableau, you can turn an unmanageable list, into a visualization that can clearly help you see where the keywords fall within certain criteria like greater or less than average search volume, greater or less than average costs-per-click and even by defining a range of search volumes, which keyphrases fall into a range that can reasonably be assumed to provide a good return on advertising investment.